Mark Budman's My Life at First Try is smart and funny and compelling, and in an era when both the immigrant experience and the resurgent aggression of the once-Soviet Russia are central issues, the novel is timely, as well. This is a splendid debut by an important new American voice.

Robert Olen Butler, a Pulitzer Prize winner

REVIEW

This blazingly fast and funny 'semi-autobiographical' novel follows a Russian man's comically earnest pursuit of the American dream. As a child, Alex, living in 1950s Siberia with his parents and grandparents, sees a picture of his American-born second cousin, Annie, and he believes he has found his destiny. Throughout his formative sexual experiences, he fantasizes about Annie, who embodies the exoticness of Western culture and the wholesomeness of the American dream. By the late 1970s, when Alex's parents decide to decamp for the U.S., Alex packs up his wife and their young daughter, too, and after the trio land in upstate New York, Alex goes to work at the IBM-like HAL Corporation while his wife, Lyuba, an internist, takes longer to settle in. At first, Alex is content with his new freedom-loving democratic identity, but as his children grow and Lyuba becomes more independent the dream begins to lose its sheen. The novel is hilarious, eye-opening and, by the end, a little depressing. It's tough not to have Alex's buoyant energy rub off on the reader. (Dec.)

Reviewed by: Publishers Weekly

EXCERPT

Grammar

It's 1957. I am seven. We are not slaves. Slaves are not us. Even in Russian, a language with a more forgiving grammar than English, that second sentence is barely grammatical. Yet Idea Vasil'evna, our first grade teacher, forces us to write it in our notebooks. She has no choice. It's printed in our textbooks. What's written by a pen can't be struck out by an ax.

We dip our pens into the inkwells, stick our tongues out and write, "?-?-?-? . . ." I hate how the ink smells--like scarlet fever. The pigtails of the girl in front of me beg to be pulled but I restrain myself. I'm a man.

We know that we live in a Socialist society, but we are ready for the next step in the path of progress. That's what Idea Vasil'evna said before the class began. She is wise and motherly.

She drums the beat on her desk with a ruler. Occasionally, she goose-steps the aisles, and cranes her neck to check our progress. When she does that, our hands shake. She hits the boys on the fingers with the ruler and returns to her desk. She never hits the girls. Their fingers are delicate, like ivory netsuke, and their tears shoot out too easily. She smells like the perfume store, only stronger.

Above the teacher's desk, sweet Grandfather Lenin observes us with glee. If he could, he would jump out from his gilded frame, take away Idea Vasil'evna??'s ruler, and drum our fingers with it. He would never spare the girls.

His portrait is off-center, and next to it, there is a painted-over spot. Kids say that it had Stalin's portrait hanging there once. A few years before, these leaders would have jumped out together, and divided the responsibilities. Joseph, you go to the right, and I will take the left. Don't spare the rod, Joseph.

Joseph would nod, grinning under his sardonic mustache. Afterwards, back in his frame, he would light a pipe. Lenin would squint like a tomcat with the belly full of mice.

But now, Lenin is lonely.

The bell rings. We run into the schoolyard, which is surrounded by a heavy iron fence. We scream. We jump up and down. We chase each other. Two older boys, maybe even sixth graders, get into a fistfight, and we watch. One boy falls and the other kicks him in the ribs. The school principal comes out and positions himself by the gates. He looks like a statue in the town square, but without a horse. Iron face. Endless shoulders. A raised hand. His clothes are the color of dust. Does he have shiny, polished balls like the horse in the square? He coughs into a bullhorn. Everyone quiets, even the boy on the ground. The principal speaks.

I can make out only some words. Party. Lenin. Happy childhood. American imperialism. Five-year plan. When I grow up, I will draw posters and write big words with a red pen.

Yesterday, I saw a group of foreign tourists in downtown. They stood so straight and laughed loudly like kids, as if no one was watching them. They were dressed in shiny, neat clothing and their voices sounded like the cry of the birds heading west. I want to be a foreigner.

The bell rings again.

We return to the next class. A banner hangs along the length of the aisle. The Party solemnly proclaims: this generation of the Soviet people will live in a Communist society. That's progress. One plus one is two. Slaves are not us, and will never be.